promissive

promissive adjective: making or implying a promise; promising.

Adjective

promissive (comparative more promissive, superlative most promissive)

Making or implying a promise; promising.
- I answer, that the word may be considered under a double notion, either as it is operative of faith, or as it is promissive of rest to believers: take it as operative of faith, and so it profits, not being mixed with faith, otherwise faith could not come by hearing, as the apostle asserts, (Rom. x....1844, Edward Polhill, The Divine Will Considered in Its Eternal Decrees, page 191
- The performing of the promises cancelled the promissive words; for if they were yet promissive, then what was promised is not performed; this was promised by certain signs. Those promissive signs are cancelled, because the promissive Verity is exhibited.1847, John Johnson, Theological Works, page 136
Implying that the speaker intends to do something or guarantees something.
- Changing the expression—shall is predictive, and will is promissive in the first person only; whereas, in the second and third, will is predictive, and shall promissive.1862, Robert Gordon Latham, The English Language, page 622
- As we will see, Korean also has promissive and propositive speech act sentence particles, which encode commitment and suggestion, respectively, and exclamative/mirative, indicating a surprise.2019, EunHee Lee, Korean Syntax and Semantics, page 116

promissive (plural promissives)

A promissive mood, phrase, word, or inflection.
- The promissive presumably belongs with informant subjects because we can assert a special kind of commitment concerning our own future actions; or, in a question, ask for this commitment from the addressee.2018, Simeon Floyd, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Lila San Roque, Egophoricity, page 427
- The answer to the first question is negative: yídìng cannot express strong epistemic necessity in an imprative or a promissive.2018, Jiun-Shiung Wu, Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese

The group of substnces which binds and effects the physiology of the biomembrane is promissive in relation with its effect against cancer, on immune system, cell differentiation and aging.1977, Mitsubishi Kasei Seimei Kagaku Kenkyūjo, Annual Report - Volume 6, page 48:
Shall is simply predictive; will is predictive and promissive as well.2021, R. G. Latham, The English Language:
In addition to the four major sentence types, there are minor sentence types which are marked by distinct sentence-enders, in particular, promissive, apperceptive, exclamative, and premonitive.2019, Korean, Ho-min Sohn:

What does promissive mean?: Promissive means making or implying a promise; promising.
How do you use promissive in a sentence?: The group of substnces which binds and effects the physiology of the biomembrane is promissive in relation with its effect against cancer, on immune system, cell differentiation and aging.
What part of speech is promissive?: Promissive can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: promissive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “promissive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/promissive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.